Shifts in tourists’ attitudes towards the destination offering

Abstract

Purpose – This paper presents tourist attitudes regarding the tourism offer of Rijeka and the Opatija Riviera. The main purpose of this study is to find out whether there are any differences in attitudes towards the destination tourism offering between tourists visiting these destinations in 2014 and those visiting in 2016. Methodology – Two tourist on-site-surveys were carried out, one during the summer months of 2014 and the other during the summer of 2016. The analysis was carried out on a sample of 1198 respondents. Data analysis included: descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, paired sample t-test and Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA). Findings – The results of the independent t-tests confirmed that there are statistically significant differences in overall satisfaction, as well as in in seventeen offering elements (out of twenty-two), between tourists visiting these destinations during summer 2014 and those visiting in 2016, indicating that tourists who visited these towns in 2016 were more satisfied that those who visited in 2014. However, the IPA results suggest that the offering should be additionally improved in order to exceed tourists’ expectations. Contribution – These results confirm that the efforts and overall improvements made by destination management and all stakeholders have contributed to higher tourist satisfaction. The findings can serve as a quality information base for destination management in making future decisions on the allocation of scarce resources to improve those offering attributes that the tourists nevertheless found to be less satisfactory.

Keywords

• tourists
• attitudes
• satisfaction
• destination offering
• ipa